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Maybe Raz did something I'm not aware of, but the reports I heard seemed overblown to me. "Warlord of Capitol Hill" sounded like a catchy phrase that got picked up and tossed around right-wing media, and persisted virally until the end. But maybe that meme contributed to public opinion turning, allowing the shutdown, regardless of whether it was true.
I wasn't down there a lot, but I never felt unsafe because of the large men with guns. It was the opposite, actually: I worried more about the criminals, crazies, addicts, and people currently high, and I thought the presence of the "security" team made it less likely that one of those other people would start something. That's just one person's perspective, of course. But I don't recall hearing about them being involved in the rapes or murders or fencing or drug dealing or whatever else went down.
I do still wonder about extortion, though - there's a liquor store across the street from the police station, right in the heart of the CHAZ/CHOP, and it seemed to survive without visible damage (other than graffiti outside). It's hard to imagine someone there not wanting to shake down the store for free booze, but either they didn't, or it was covered up. I assume the people who run the place wouldn't say anything, because they want to stay safe.
Your OWS story does sound very familiar. The incident that triggered the shutdown of the CHOP was a shooting, that left a black 16-year-old boy dead and a 14-year-old boy wounded. Apparently the kid was from San Diego and had borrowed some money from family the previous Wednesday, to travel north to be part of the protest. Sunday night, he died in a shooting that had some connection to a carjacked SUV, although reports agree that someone else had stolen the SUV and brought it to the CHOP, so last I heard it was still unclear what he and the other kid were doing around it.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/everybody-down-what-happened-at-the-chop-shooting-that-killed-a-teenager-and-led-to-the-areas-shutdown/
Raz illegally transfered "semiautomatic assault weapons" without a background check, which is a crime in WA and supposedly an enforcement priority for the party. Needless to say there was no attempt to prosecute anyone involved, because the law was only intended to be used against political enemies.
Yeah, he did that.
There's a whole thing about the City of Seattle and King County selectively not enforcing certain laws (although the City of Seattle has gotten better, while King County is still playing progressive while the city suffers the results). Plus the thing about how a lot of gun control laws primarily target lawful users but ignore the illegal users who actually do most of the killing. I'm libertarian enough that I like having few laws, strictly enforced, and while I have some doubts about the wisdom of the 2nd amendment in the modern world, it - unlike abortion - is in the fucking Constitution until repealed.
But was it that specific event that caused the negative publicity and contributed to the shutdown? I'm curious; I don't know what it looked like to people outside. I was focused on the innumerable local problems, plus recovering from covid and dealing with some other life stuff.
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